


Last Match in the Matchbox

by EndoplasmicPanda



Series: Endo's Oneshots [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Happy Ending, Minor Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke, Sakura is Conflicted, Wanderlust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 10:04:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13521945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EndoplasmicPanda/pseuds/EndoplasmicPanda
Summary: Sakura huffs, marching across the room and tossing back the second chair at the table. “What, and you’ve got a better idea?”“As a matter of fact,” Sarada says, tapping out something with her thumbs, not looking up. “Yeah, I do.”“And?”“And get a vacation,” Sarada says.Sakura blinks. “What?”“Vacation,” Sarada says. "I really think you need to get out of the house. Stretch your legs a bit.”-In which Sakura Haruno realizes that being discontent with adult life is part of the Team Seven contractual fine print.





	Last Match in the Matchbox

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Enbi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enbi/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Enbi!! 
> 
> You are without a doubt one of the most talented, brilliant, empathetic people I have ever met. Your writing is so raw and full of emotion, and the way you put a piece of yourself in everything you do, whether it's fanfiction or your infatuation with Olive Garden, is something that never ceases to inspire me to be a better person.
> 
> Thanks for being a friend. We don't deserve you.
> 
> Love,  
> Endo

There’s a fire in Sakura’s heart, but it’s smoldering and turning to ash.

The days are short, each half hour slot of time filled with doctor’s visits and parent teacher conferences and roundtable discussions in rooms with too many chairs and too many voices. She leaves each day dull, and comes home duller. The work is tiring, but meaningful, and it’s that meaning that leaves Sakura aching and confused and  _ guilty  _ more than anything else.

“You need a break,” Tsunade says, the moment Sakura bursts into her apartment and begins rummaging through her medicine cabinet.

“Why do you think I’m here?” Sakura grunts, rifling through old bottles of antacid and migraine medications and jars of what Sakura  _ hopes _ is burn salve. When she comes up empty-handed, she huffs and shoots a glare at Tsunade. “Where are you hiding it?”

The innocent bat of Tsunade’s eyes collides with Sakura’s look and sends it soaring over her head, useless. “Why, Sakura - I couldn’t possibly know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sakura says. “I know Shizune bugs the place. But I know you, and I  _ know  _ you won’t go down without a fight.”

Tsunade stands, crosses her arms over her loose robe, roots herself in place over a rug splayed between the old leather couch and the end table holding a small jungle of various potted plants. She fixes her with a stare, clears her throat, and taps her foot. “I said,” she says, raising an eyebrow, “I couldn’t possibly know what you’re talking about.”

Sakura rolls her eyes, looks at the space between her feet. “The floor?” she says. “Really? That’s the oldest, most cliche trick in the book.”

Tsunade grunts, leans over, and pulls the rug aside. “Yeah, but it works,” she says, prying up a loose floorboard. “Besides, Shizune knows if I caught her snooping around in my life, I’d make her get the vacuum and clean the place.”

“Being ancient has its perks,” Sakura laughs.

“Brat,” Tsunade mumbles, but does nothing but amble back to her place on the couch. “I’d like to think it’s because of my international pedigree and high level of respect.”

“Oh, wow - did the casinos forgive your debts?”

“Shut up.”

Sakura steals a bottle of liquor, intending on leaving and drinking it alone, but ends up sitting cross-legged on Tsunade’s couch instead, sharing it with a friend. She ignores the rest of her appointments for the day, and feels alive for the first time in half a decade.

The fire in her heart jumps, burns like the slide of sake down her throat. It’s synthetic, but enough.

* * *

 

“Have you done your homework yet?” Sakura asks, chiseling at a grease stain on an old frying pan, shouting over the roar of water in her kitchen sink. A door slams across the house.

“Seriously?” Sarada says, marching into the room with a groan, dropping her bag on the floor next to the refrigerator and throwing herself into one of the chairs at their kitchenette. “No ‘Hi, Sarada, how are you? How was school today’?”

“Hi Sarada,” Sakura parrots, biting her tongue and shoving her sponge into the pan. “How are you? How was school today?”

“Just peachy, thanks,” Sarada deadpans. “What’re you doing?”

Sakura grunts, soaking the brown, burnt splotch with soap and running it under the scalding water. “Trying to get this damn pan clean.”

Sarada raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t those the non-stick pans you bought last month? The ones that if you scrub too hard, the non-stick stuff rubs off?”

Sakura looks up, stares at the wall above the countertop, lets the pot fall into the sink with an explosive rattle. “That explains why  _ last _ time I did the dishes it was easy to clean,” she mutters.

“To answer your question,” Sarada says, pulling out her phone, “ _ yes,  _ I did do my homework. I had nothing else to do during lunch today.”

“Must be nice,” Sakura mumbles. “I eat my lunch on the train now.”

“Seriously?”

Sakura huffs, marching across the room and tossing back the second chair at the table. “What, and you’ve got a better idea?”

“As a matter of fact,” Sarada says, tapping out something with her thumbs, not looking up. “Yeah, I do.”

“And?”

“ _ And  _ get a vacation,” Sarada says.

Sakura blinks. “What?”

“Vacation,” Sarada says. She pauses; frowns. “Wait a second. Have you taken a single day off since I was born?”

Sakura leans back in her chair, feigning indignance. “What? Of course I have.”

Sarada fixes her with a glare so familiar Sakura doesn’t realize it’s her own until much,  _ much _ later in the evening. “Sick days don’t count, Mom. Especially when you only let yourself stay home when you’re about to die.”

“I don’t--” Sakura snaps her mouth shut, shakes her head, lets out a sharp breath. “I don’t have to listen to you, you know. You’re my daughter; you should remember that. I don’t need a second mother.”

“I  _ am _ your daughter,” Sarada says, and her voice is quieter now - more sentimental and careful and sincere around the edges in a way that makes Sakura realize, dangerously, that she cares. “I know you better than anyone. And I really think you need to get out of the house. Stretch your legs a bit.”

Sakura twists her lips, looks away. The water in the sink is still running, but neither of them pay it any mind.

“I’ll think about it,” is all she says, and when she stands up to finish the dishes, she pretends the hole in her heart that’s shaped like the empty third seat at their table is just the burning of the hot water on her palms.

* * *

 

Sakura doesn’t go to work the next day. She doesn’t go to work the next week.

There is a park outside of their house, all green and bright and sunny. Sakura stares at it out her bedroom window every morning, tries not to notice the way her eyes have faded from that same green into something darker, more empty.

Today, she feels alive.

She sleeps in, lets her alarm smolder in a pile from where her fist blasted it through her nightstand. Sarada bumbles about downstairs, but Sakura just lays there, listens to her tinkering in the kitchen, waits for her daughter to call a farewell across the house and for the front door to slam shut.

Then she’s alone. Alone and excited.

She sits up, forgoes a shower, dresses not in the carefully pressed and organized pink dress and white lab coat that’s draped over her desk chair next to her jewelry and her watch and her platform sandals, but instead in dark greens and comfortable cotton and something with pockets.

She pauses before she steps outside her bedroom, lets her eyes drift. It feels empty, despite being plenty full, and for some reason, Sakura thinks it would look better the further away she gets.

This is how she finds herself sitting alone on a park bench, feet propped up on a mossy stone, the tall, looming arch of Konoha’s outer city walls casting deep, dark shadows across the forest’s edge.

She makes to check her watch, hiccoughs when her eyes find an empty wrist instead. 

Oh. She’d left that at home.

Sakura slides back on the bench, lets the sharp, cold rivets of steel holding it together prod at the skin where her clothes had ridden up and left her exposed. 

Her heart is racing, thundering in her chest to the beat of well-timed footsteps. She imagines those steps taking her away from the bench, leading her down the winding gravel path that stretches into the trees and vanishes into the countryside. She doesn’t know where they might lead her, but she’s willing to let them try.

Someone coughs on the bench next to her.

Sakura sighs. “Hi, Kakashi-sensei.”

“You never will call me by just my name, will you?” Kakashi drawls, white cloak curling around his arms like storm clouds twisted around a mountain. He’s leaning back on the bench beside her, staring ahead at nothing in particular.

“And you’ll never stop sneaking up on me, will you?” Sakura replies easily. Her eyes are still staring at the slit in the woods, staring past the last trees of the Hidden Leaf.

Kakashi chuckles - it’s a dry, quiet sound, like dead leaves at the end of summer. “No,” he says. “I guess not.”

“The weather’s nice,” Sakura says. There’s a beat of silence where Sakura panics, because there was hidden meaning in those words, but when Kakashi murmurs and slides back in his seat alongside her, she realizes he’s gotten the message.

“Yes,” he says. “It really is.”

“Might go for a walk.”

“Does this not count?”

“No, I mean--” Her breath catches in her throat, and she stops. Her hands are twisting around each other, fingers knotted like tangled hair, and she watches them dance. “Further. Further than this.”

Kakashi hums.

“I don’t know, though,” Sakura admits. She winces. “I don’t know if I should.”

There’s a rustle of fabric, and Sakura knows he’s shrugged. “From the way you’ve dressed,” Kakashi says, “I think you’ve already made up your mind.”

“Have I, though?” she says, half laugh, half breath. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“If you’re asking me for permission,” Kakashi says, “you don’t have to do that anymore.”

Sakura winces. “That’s not what I mean.”

“It’s what it sounds like.”

She turns, lets herself stare a hole through the fabric of his facemask. He blinks, looks back at her, then looks away, bored. 

“You’re here anyways, aren’t you?”

“I’m always here,” Kakashi says through a long, slow exhale, and folds his hands across his lap. “I’m always there. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, Sakura, but I’m a ninja.”

Sakura laughs. “Yeah. A retired one,  _ sensei _ .”

“That’s  _ Lord _ Sensei to you,” Kakashi says. He frowns. “Or something. Never did get the hang of titles.”

“ _ No _ . Really?”

Kakashi shrugs, closes his eyes, leans his head back against the weathered wood of the bench. They sit in silence, letting the wind play the forest like an instrument. 

Sakura watches a sapling twist in the breeze, hidden underneath the shadow of the tree that spawned it. She frowns, noting how little sunlight it’s getting, but Kakashi interrupts her train of thought before it can crash into anything important.

“Is Sarada okay?”

Sakura blinks. “Of course she’s okay,” she says, a little too fast, and she clicks her tongue at herself for it. “Well, I mean, she’s got a place to stay, so I’m not worried. She spends the night at Naruto’s every other day anyways. At least it seems like it.” A wince.  _ Talking too much. _ “Plus, she’s going to be a genin in a few weeks. She’ll have to get used to being alone.” A frown. “In a manner of speaking, at least.”

Kakashi is silent for a moment, looking at her. Then he just shrugs, fully and with his entire upper body. “It seems like you’ve made up your mind.”

“Sensei,” Sakura says, “if what you’re saying is right, then I already made up my mind weeks ago.”

“And am I ever wrong?”

“Frequently,” she says, looking at him from over her shoulder. She smiles. “But this time? I think I’ll take the risk.”

Kakashi meets her eyes with his own. “You don’t  _ have _ to leave, you know.”

She  _ stares _ at him.

“Yeah,” he smiles, and it twists at his eyes, “that didn’t work with your husband, either.”

Sakura snorts, jumps to her feet, threads her hands into the pockets in her pants. “Where should I go first?” 

“Does it matter?”

There’s a fire in Sakura’s heart, and despite what she may think, she’s always known it was there. It feeds on her fears, feeds on her anxiety and her hopelessness and her apprehension. But it struggles under monotony - chokes and sputters and flickers away.

She prefers the indecision. Prefers the risk.

She takes a step, turns around, looks through the open gates at the mountain that’s always been far too close and takes a breath. For the first time since the Fourth War, she feels empty, but not in a stifling way. Not in a  _ bad _ way.

The light in her soul jumps, catches hold of the emptiness, blooms like a nightshade. 

“No,” Sakura says, and turns. The Hokage Monument disappears. 

She smiles.  “I guess it doesn’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to **[MaethoMixup](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MaethoMixup/pseuds/MaethoMixup)** for betaing this for me!
> 
> (Posting at 12:00 CST because I must sleep) 
> 
> ❤ ♥


End file.
